Once the effendi was passing the gate of the padishah´s palace when he saw a small crowd working there. Curious, he approached and discovered that they were making the walls of the palace higher. The effendi, as usual, felt it his duty to express his opinion. "But the walls were high enough before. What is the point of building them higher!"

"You are dim-witted, Nasirdin!” said the ministeres. "The point of building them higher is to protect the palace from thieves. They might climb over the walls and steal all the treasure of the empire!"

"Oh," said the effendi. Then, starring a long time at ministers and advisors, he said, "Thieves won’t be able to climb over the wall from the outside, but how can it protected from the thieves who are already inside?"

Once the effendi was a guest in the house of a rich and miserly lord. The lord filled his own cup to the brim with goat´s milk and filled the effendi´s cup only half way. "Drink" he said. "I have nothing good to offer you except this cup of milk”.

"Sir," the effendi answered courteously, "could you first give me a saw?"

"A saw? What for?" said the lord in astonishment.
"Well, look…" and the effendi handed his half-filled cup to the lord.

"The top half is useless, don´t you think so? If we sawed it off, it wouldn´t be wasted."

The was a time in which the effendi lived as a lord, and everyone tried hard to become part of his circle of friends. One day somebody told him, "Nerisdin, what a great number of friends you have! How can you count them all?"

Shaking his head, the effendi said, "Count them? Well, for the moment, that´s impossible. Later when I don’t have a cent will be the time to count them."

Once a big official saved a sheep from the jaws of a wolf. The sheep was then obliged to follow his savior home. But as soon as they arrived, the man decided to slaughter it. The poor beast began baaing with all its energy. The uproar was too much for the effendi, who lived next door; and he came over to see what was wrong.

Once the padisha said, "Nesirdin, if you had to choose between money and justice, which would you choose?"
"Money," answered effendi.
"What?" exclaimed the padishah. "I would choose hustice. Money, after all, is not so rare. Justice, on the other hand, is very rare in this world."
"Men always desire what they do not have," replied the effendi. "In fact, you only want what you have never had."

Once a friend invited the effendi to lunch. This friend was very fond of music. Therefore, he showed the effendi all the musical instruments he had and and played a piece of music on each one.

At noon the effendi began to be hungry. But the friend went right on playing. "Nesirdin," he suddenly asked, "according to you, which sound is best, the lute or the zither?"
"My dear friend," the effendi answered, "to tell you the truth, right now I think there is no more beautiful sound in the world than that of a spoon scraping the bottom of a soup bowl."